The Impact of Length of the School Year on Student Performance and Earnings: Evidence from the German Short School Years

Jorn-Steffen Pischke

No 874, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper investigates how changing the length of school year, leaving the basic curriculum unchanged, affects learning and subsequent earnings. I use variation introduced by the West-German short school years in 1966-67, which exposed some students to a total of about two thirds of a year less of schooling while enrolled. I show that the short school years led indeed to shorter schooling for affected students. Using comparisons across cohorts, states, and secondary school tracks, I find that the short school years increased grade repetition in primary school, but had no adverse effect on the number of students attending the highest secondary school track or earnings later in life.

Keywords: grade repetition; human capital; returns to schooling; length of school year; tracking; term length (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 64 pages
Date: 2003-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Published - published in: Economic Journal, 2007, 117 (523), 1216-1242

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp874.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Impact of Length of the School Year on Student Performance and Earnings: Evidence From the German Short School Years (2007)
Working Paper: The impact of length of the school year on student performance and earnings: evidence from the German short school years (2007)
Working Paper: The Impact of Length of the School Year on Student Performance and Earnings: Evidence from the German Short School Years (2003)
Working Paper: The Impact of Length of the School Year on Student Performance and Earnings: Evidence from the German Short School Year (2003)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp874

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().